Question Four

She fell silent and the stewards began moving bench by bench, laying a single sheet upon every table. Each paper was bound with a cord and sealed with a stamp whose color matched the band upon the student's wrist. Amaeren, meanwhile, turned her gaze to the left window, through which the Twin Light Orb atop the high tower was visible, beyond the third window, its brown light stood upon the very verge of its death.

She raised both hands, and along the walls, the sensory mages mirrored her movement as one, their lips stirred with the binding spell. A faint shimmer passed through the hall, travelling over every paper at once.

Four things happened within the same breath, the cords loosened, the bell rang, the Twin Light Orb turned yellow, marking the beginning of the third teil, and twelve hundred hands reached for twelve hundred papers.

Prince Valere Sendraje, seated in the third seat of the sixth row, moved his misty-blue gaze over the paper and stopped on the question four.

"Your enemy commands the stronger cavalry, the stronger archers, and an infantry equal to your own. Name the terrain upon which you would meet them, the weather you would call your ally, the formation you would raise, the strategy you would trust your life to, and the hour in which you would spend it. Explain why each choice holds, and why each would fail.

"Name the single tactical error, theirs or your own, that would open the road to victory or seal the road to ruin and explain why waiting upon another's error is itself a strategy rather than merely the absence of one?

"Name a war in which such a thing was tested, and tell what became of it, whether it earned a mere victory or one that could be called a historical win, and what odds you would have given the commander who dared to choose it."

Valere read through the remaining questions, eight were common to all candidates, while the last four were specific to archery, but every one of them demanded considerable thought and an even greater number of words. His hand ran through his unruly brown locks, where streaks of blue edged the strands, deep as the ocean beneath its darker waters, or so they appeared beneath the sunlight pouring through the window.

He, then, swiftly answered the first three, his quill moved steadily across the parchment, but when he returned to the fourth, his hand came to rest. He considered the question four for a while, weighing its many demands, then dipped his quill into the inkpot. "Narrow mountain pass," he began, and the quill moved before the thought had fully settled within his own mind. "Where their cavalry cannot charge in number, and their archers surrender to the high ground..." He did not stop after that.

Rhovyn, two seats behind him, had already sorted all twelve questions by difficulty, an old habit his father had drilled into him. The fourth claimed the crown, the only question that had truly surprised him. He chose mountain warfare for his answer and set his quill to work.

A seat behind him, an Archer glanced up towards Amaeren, only to find her gaze already upon him, as though she had been watching him alone.

Behind him, Nehara continued her silent recitation, her thoughts kept moving from the names of medicines to surgical procedures, from rare herbs and their uses to the limitations that accompanied each remedy, and from there to the principles and intricacies of mage healing. She went over them all, one after another, scarcely allowing a moment between subjects. To her, every question seemed much the same, demanding considerable knowledge and yet yielding to the same discipline of thought. They were difficult, certainly, but not beyond her reach; challenging enough to require care, simple enough once she knew where to begin.

Throughout the hall, quills scratched against parchment, pages turned and the occasional bench creaked beneath a restless disciple. Every so often, a disciple would lift their eyes from the paper and find Amaeren watching them. It mattered not which corner of the hall they looked from, nor how briefly they dared raise their head; the violet gaze met theirs every time. Some lowered their gazes at once, their hearts quickened, suddenly conscious of every movement of their hands and every glance cast towards a neighboring table. Even those who had no intention of cheating found themselves afraid that the smallest, most innocent gesture might be mistaken for an attempt at deceit. The sensory mages stood watch along the walls, but it was Amaeren's gaze that made the disciples feel as though not a thought could pass unseen within the Ashwing Hall.

A boy seated in the twentieth seat of the eighth row, confident in his own cleverness, thought the mages were merely a bluff, yet risking his future on the possibility that they were not was hardly a wise choice, he reasoned. He glanced up and found a mage keeping watch over him, his eyes lingered for a moment before he lowered them to his parchment.

He answered two questions before curiosity overcame him once more. This time, when he glanced up, the mage was looking elsewhere. The mage had not been watching when he abandoned the thought of cheating? He wondered, returning to his paper, he could not tell, but it frightened him.

Amidst the rustle of parchment and the steady scratching of quills, Ryska remained absorbed in the question before her, having read it three times before she ever reached for her quill. Once she began, she wrote as she shot, with certainty and without hesitation. For the fourth question, she chose city warfare. "Narrow streets to strangle their cavalry..." she began, and the words followed one another with such ease that she scarcely seemed to pause between thoughts. By the time she finally laid her quill aside, four pages bore the weight of her answer.

Erynae, too, chose city warfare and wrote without once pausing to think. Her hand moved steadily, each answer found its place upon the parchment as though she had been waiting for the questions to be asked.

Bram, meanwhile, scratched at his head, staring at the fourth question. He knew the answer well enough; the understanding was perfectly formed inside his mind, but the writing was not coming the way understanding had, the distance between those two things was about four paragraphs wide, and the bell, merciless as time itself, was always going to ring.

The bell rang at the end of the fourth teil. Quills fell still across Ashwing Hall, and the last hurried strokes of ink gave way to the rustle of parchment as the stewards moved between the benches, binding and collecting the examination papers. One by one, the bundles were gathered and carried out of the hall. Only when the attendants had departed did Amaeren step forward once more, turning to face the assembled disciples.

"The result board shall be displayed at the First Gate of the Bridge, at teil twelve," Amaeren announced, her voice carried through the hall. "Your second examination shall commence at teil two.

"Those sitting for Infantry shall report to Vaerhold, here. Solmaere lies to the east, Merrath farther east still, and Aelthara to the west. Volunteers shall be stationed along the entire route to direct you to your appointed academies, if you require guidance, seek it from them.

"All three gates of the Bridge, together with the academy gates, shall be closed at the end of teil one," she paused, allowing the silence to settle before continuing. "The Preface Charter entrusts this academia with the safety of every disciple who has come to sit these examinations, whether they pass or not, but your conduct remains your own responsibility. You are expected to exercise sound judgement, remain vigilant, and conduct yourselves with due regard for the safety of those around you.

"Let there be no misunderstanding on this matter," she lifted her chin, her expression left little room for doubt that she meant every word. "Any disciple found intimidating, harassing, threatening, coercing, tormenting, or deliberately inflicting bodily or brainly harm upon another shall be rejected, regardless of examination results, and barred from Aldaene."

Amaeren's gaze swept the length of the hall before she continued. "The assistance, hospitality, and protection extended to you by the people you encountered throughout your journey, from your homelands to Aldaene, are not courtesies to be taken lightly, for those who offered you aid did so in keeping with an oath the Myris undertook four centuries ago, so, none of you shall give me cause to make an example of your conduct before the next generation of disciples, as a lesson in what must never be done."